The Fighter

The Fighter

Movie Review: The Fighter

Much-awaited, The Fighter takes you to the ring with the talented sensitive boxer Mickey Ward, a struggling welterweight who is torn between the discipline needed to win fights and the bond with his meddling mother and his crack addict ex-boxer brother. If that isnt enough, there is a chorus of Irish-American sisters around who chose the bar instead of the convent for evening prayers.

Much-awaited, The Fighter takes you to the ring with the talented sensitive boxer Mickey Ward, a struggling welterweight who is torn between the discipline needed to win fights and the bond with his meddling mother and his crack addict ex-boxer brother. If that isnt enough, there is a chorus of Irish-American sisters around who chose the bar instead of the convent for evening prayers.

Its s true story, but its also an example of having your cake and eating it too. (Yes, there is a cake in one of the movies emotional crescendos.) The Fighter shows how at least one pug revived his boxing career without abandoning the family that embodies every Massachusetts underclass screen stereotype. Almost every one, that is ““ there isnt a priest here, thank God.

But even truth can have romance. And, more remarkably, theres still life in the Boston (area) family saga, and in the boxing saga, even though Martin Scorsese turned this one down.

So did Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), who executive-produced, but its a welcome return to the screen for director David O. Russell (Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees, who reminds you that family life can be far riskier than getting into the ring with professional boxers.

The plot of The Fighter is movie boilerplate. Mickey Ward (Mark Wahlberg) is a young journeyman from once-proud downtrodden Lowell, Mass, whose older brother, Dickie Eklund (Christian Bale) once went the distance in the ring with champ Sugar Ray Leonard, even knocking Leonard down in one round. (Whether Leonard was knocked down or slipped is one of the films few mysteries.)

Mickey wants to box seriously, but chain-smoking fashion-victim mother Alice (Melissa Leo) and Dickie insist on managing him. In Mickeys big break, his opponent gets the flu and the replacement is a middleweight who outweighs him by 20 pounds. Mickey gets beaten into hamburger, he then has his hands broken defending his brother from cops, Dickie goes to prison, and the spiral descends. And then theres a his romance with Charlene (Amy Adams), a trash-talking bartender who learns what everyone else knows already ““ that Mickeys family are a bunch of inbred louts with plenty of time on their hands for fighting.

The odds against Mickey achieving anything are huge, but this is a movie and theres redemption. David Russell brings enough drama into pivotal fight scenes that the audience at the screening I attended responded as if they were in a boxing arena.

As award-mania would have it, this is a season of hyped performances ““ think of Natalie Portman as a ballerina in Black Swan ““ and Wahlberg and Bale seem to be going for an iconic lovable bond in The Fighter that will earn nominations. Bale lost weight to play Dickie the haggard clown who battles crack instead of the new Ray Leonards of this world. (He manages to channel anger better here than in his legendary on-set explosion in Terminator: Salvation. (see video below) )Wahlberg also shed pounds and trained for the part. Boxing fans may find him a little old for it, but the same fans may see a resemblance between Wahlberg and Bobby Czyz, the New Jersey fighter who went from middleweight to heavyweight in the 1980s and 1990s.

Amy Adams as Charlene merits induction into whatever club honors non-Mass actors for Mass-tering the accent and the attitude. “Courageous,” the reviewers and quote-whores will say, and theyll be right. (Melissa Leo, whos almost always good, won entry into that club for her unlikeable role as a bitter corrupt policewoman in Tony Goldwyns underappreciated Conviction, another true redemption story set outside Boston, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.) Yet the real achievement in The Fighter is the family ensemble which turns petty nastiness into an all-purpose shredder. Russell also gets the depressed Lowell Mass ensemble right in his depiction of Dickies preferred crack house as an equal opportunity drug den, complete with a gorgeous addicted Cambodian immigrant girlfriend (Chanty Sok).

Thanks to DP Hoyte van Hoytema (The Girl, Let the Right One In) The Fighter has the look of the finest American street photography in its exterior shots, setting it apart from the mulch of Mass family sagas.